'Noah's Ark': Russia to Build World's First DNA Databank of All Living Things!

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Oldest Fossilized Sperm Found and It's Enormous

Discovery News

By Jennifer Viegas 

Mussel-Shrimp Sperm Looks Like Angel-Hair Pasta/ Renate Matzke-Karasz, Ludwig-Maximilian University and the Geo-Bio-Center

Paleontologists have just discovered the world’s oldest-known petrified, fossilized sperm, according to a paper published in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The sperm dates to at least 16–17 million years ago and was found in a near-perfect state of preservation. The researchers often use one word to describe it: “giant.”

“The animal that produced these giant sperm belongs to the class of Ostracoda, or mussel shrimp,” lead author Renate Matzke-Karasz, a paleontologist at the Ludwig-Maximiliian University and Geo-Bio Center, told Discovery News, explaining that these hearty animals and their relatives have been on Earth for at least 500 million years.

Male mussel shrimp have industrial-strength sperm, which could explain why these animals have been around for so long. While it looks like angel hair pasta and strands are less than an inch in length, the sperm is enormous relative to the size of its male producer.

Canadian Dentist to Use John Lennon's Tooth to Clone Baby from Dead Beatle's DNA

By Breitbart News 

RED DEER, Alberta, April 10 (UPI) -- All you need is love -- and maybe an old tooth…

During an episode of Dead Famous DNA on Channel 4 in England, Canadian dentist Dr. Michael Zuk revealed that he plans on using DNA from one of John Lennon’s teeth to make a clone baby that he can raise as his own.

“If there is enough DNA to sequence it, it could be basically genetic real estate,” Zuk said. “My goal is to own John Lennon’s DNA.”

Zuk purchased Lennon’s molar for $33,000 when it was put up for auction about three years ago.

The doctor believes that owning the tooth grants him the rights to Lennon’s DNA.

“I think I can, because of the laws,” Dr. Zuk said. “Depends on where you do these things. If it can’t be done in one country, you can do these things in another. To have John Lennon’s DNA sequence outside of the family protection to me, and full access to it, is worth millions.”

He even has a plan about how to make sure the test-tube baby becomes a success.

“He would still be his exact duplicate but you know, hopefully keep him away from drugs and cigarettes, that kind of thing,” Zuk said. “But you know, guitar lessons wouldn’t hurt anyone right?”

'Bizarre' Cluster of Severe Birth Defects Stuns Health Experts

By JoNel Aleccia

James Cheng / for NBC News/ Andrea Jackman comforts her 4-month-old daughter, Olivia, after her MRI scan at Seattle Children's Hospital.

A mysterious cluster of severe birth defects in rural Washington state is confounding health experts, who say they can find no cause, even as reports of new cases continue to climb.

Federal and state officials won’t say how many women in a three-county area near Yakima, Wash., have had babies with anencephaly, a heart-breaking condition in which they’re born missing parts of the brain or skull. And they admit they haven't interviewed any of the women in question, or told the mothers there's a potentially widespread problem.

But as of January 2013, officials with the Washington state health department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had counted nearly two dozen cases in three years, a rate four times the national average.

Since then, one local genetic counselor, Susie Ball of the Central Washington Genetics Program at Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital, says she has reported “eight or nine” additional cases of anencephaly and spina bifida, another birth defect in which the neural tube, which forms the brain and spine, fails to close properly.

“It does strike me as a lot,” says Ball.

And at least one Yakima mother whose baby is part of the cluster says no one told her there was a problem at all.

“I had no idea,” said Andrea Jackman, 30, whose blue-eyed daughter, Olivia, was born in September with the most severe form of spina bifida. “I honestly was really surprised that nobody had said anything. If my doctor hadn’t wanted us to see the geneticist, I wouldn’t have known.”

There’s no secret, state and CDC officials said, and they noted that small clusters of birth defects often turn out to be nothing more than sad coincidence.

The agencies released a report last summer detailing an investigation of 27 women with pregnancies that resulted in neural tube defects in Yakima, Franklin and Benton counties between 2010 and 2013. That included 23 cases of anencephaly, a rate of 8.4 per 10,000 live births, far higher than the national rate of 2.1 cases per 10,000. There were three cases of spina bifida and one with encephalocele, a sac-like protrusion of the brain through the front or back of the skull.

They publicly posted the results of the investigation in press releases and on state and federal websites. Those were picked up in news stories, including one in the local newspaper, the Yakima Herald-Republic. "State says no cause found for birth defect in Yakima County," the July headline read.

But it's not clear whether affected women saw those stories, and there was no effort to reach out to individual families, said Mandy Stahre, the CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer based in Washington state, who led the inquiry. “There were very few of us that could spend time doing this investigation,” Stahre said. “I’m not sure the women knew they were part of a cluster.”

Health officials originally were alerted to the problem by a nurse, Sara Barron, 58, who was in charge of infection control and quality assurance at Prosser Memorial Hospital, a 25-bed medical center in the farm town set on the Yakima River. A 30-year nursing veteran, she’d seen perhaps one or two devastating cases of anencephaly in her wide-ranging career.

“And now I was sitting at Prosser, with 30 deliveries a month and there’s two cases in a six-month period,” Barron said. “Then, I was talking to another doctor about it and she has a third one coming. My teeth dropped. It was like, ‘Oh my god.’”

At a regional medical meeting, there were more anecdotal reports. So Barron notified state health officials, who started looking into the problem.

“This is bizarre,” Barron said. “This is a very, very small area.”

More at NBC News.com >>

Sex with Neandertals Introduced Helpful and Harmful DNA into the Modern Human Genome

Scientific American Blog Network

By Kate Wong 

www.sci-news.com

Over the past few years a number of studies of ancient and contemporary genomes have reached the same stunning conclusion: early human species interbred, and people today carry DNA from archaic humans, including the Neandertals, as a result of those interspecies trysts. Now two new analyses of modern human genomes are providing insights into how the acquisition of Neandertal DNA affected anatomically modern Homo sapiens tens of thousands of years ago and how it continues to affect people today.

In the first study, Sriram Sankararaman and David Reich of Harvard University and their colleagues compared a complete Neandertal genome sequence with 1,004 modern human sequences to see which regions of the modern genome contain Neandertal DNA. Like other researchers before them, they observed that Asians and Europeans have DNA from Neandertals, whereas Africans have little or no Neandertal DNA. The pattern is consistent with a scenario in which early modern humans mated with Neandertals they encountered when they migrated out of Africa and into Eurasia, where Neandertals had lived for hundreds of thousands of years.

Moreover, the team determined that Neandertal DNA is not distributed evenly across the genome. Some genes have a high proportion of Neandertal ancestry (which is to say, many people today carry the Neandertal versions of these genes). Those genes with the highest Neandertal ancestry are associated with keratin, a protein found in skin and hair. The Neandertal variants of these genes may well have helped early modern humans adapt to the new environments they found themselves in as they spread into Eurasia. But the researchers also found that people today carry Neandertal genes that are associated with diseases including Crohn’s, type 2 diabetes and lupus.

Intriguingly, other regions of the modern human genome have no or very low Neandertal contribution, notably the X chromosome and genes related to the functioning of the testes. According to Sankararaman, Reich and their collaborators, the absence of Neandertal genetic material in these regions suggests that male hybrids who inherited a Neandertal X chromosome were infertile, and thus unable to pass their genes along to the next generation. The researchers detail their findings in a paper published in the December 30 Nature. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.)

In the second study, published by Science, Benjamin Vernot and Joshua M. Akey of the University of Washington screened whole genome sequences from 665 living Europeans and Asians for telltale signs of Neandertal contributions. Their results show that although non-Africans individually inherited between 1 and 3 percent of their genomes from Neandertals, different people carry different bits of Neandertal genetic material. Together these sequences represent around 20 percent of the Neandertal genome.

Like the other team, Vernot and Akey found evidence that Neandertals passed along beneficial skin genes to modern humans, including some linked to pigmentation. And they, too, observed genome regions devoid of Neandertal contributions. One such region contains the gene FOXP2, which plays an important role in speech.

Vernot and Akey’s work is additionally interesting in that they were able to use statistical and computational methods to identify the Neandertal contributions in the genomes of modern-day people without using a Neandertal genome to guide their search. This work raises the possibility that simply by analyzing the genomes of people alive today, scientists will be able to discover and describe extinct human species that mated with early H. sapiens but that, unlike Neandertals, are unknown from the fossil record. Previous studies of genomes of living people have hinted at dalliances between early H. sapiens and unknown archaic humans in Africa. Perhaps this approach will shine a light on these mysterious skeletons in our closet.

Who was 'Adam'? Genetic 'man'-hunt catches eye of Vatican scientists. The question is why?

Mary Greeley

Living Relatives of Iceman Mummy Found

Discovery News

By Rossella Lorenzi 

Ötzi the Iceman has at least 19 living male relatives in the Austrian Tirol, according to a genetic study into the origins of the people who now inhabit the region.

Scientists from the Institute of Legal Medicine at Innsbruck Medical University analyzed DNA samples taken from 3,700 blood donors in the Tyrol region of Austria.

During their study, they discovered that 19 individuals share a particular genetic mutation with the 5,300-year-old mummy, whose full genome was published last year.

PHOTOS: Iceman Mummy 20 Yrs On: Mysteries Remain

“These men and the Iceman had the same ancestors,” Walther Parson, the forensic scientist who carried out the study, told the Austrian Press Agency.

The researchers focused on parts of the human DNA which are generally inherited unchanged.

“In men it is the Y chromosomes and in females the mitochondria. Eventual changes arise due to mutations, which are then inherited further,” Parson explained.

People with the same mutations are categorized in haplogroups. Designed with letters, haplogroups allow researchers to trace early migratory routes since they are often associated with defined populations and geographical regions.

Indeed, Ötzi’s haplogroup is very rare in Europe.

“The Iceman had the halogroup G, sub category G-L91. In our research we found another 19 people with this genetic group and subgroup,” Parson said.

ANALYSIS: The Ice Mummy: Little-Known Facts

Having carried Y chromosome haplogroup analysis, Parson was able to trace only the male descendants of the Neolithic man.

So far the 19 individuals have not been informed of their genetic relationship to Ötzi.

Found in 1991 in a melting glacier in the Ötztal Alps (hence the name), the mummy is one of the most heavily investigated human corpses of all time.

Scientists discovered that Ötzi had brown eyes and very bad teeth, was lactose intolerant, had a genetic predisposition for an increased risk for coronary heart disease and probably had Lyme disease.

It’s certain he died a violent death: In 2007, CT scans showed that an arrowhead had lacerated his left subclavian artery, leading to fast bleeding.

ANALYSIS: The Iceman Suffered Brain Damage Before Death

CAT scan of the mummy’s brain and a paleoproteomic study have recently pointed to a cerebral trauma — a violent blow to the head — as the cause of death.

As investigation into the mummy continues, new relatives, alive and well, could be added to the list of the 19 descendants.

According to Parson, the genetic mutation might be also found in the nearby Swiss region of Engadine and in Italy’s South Tyrol region.

“We have already found Swiss and Italian partners so that we can continue our research,” he said.

Image: Facial reconstruction of Ötzi the Iceman. Credit: Heike Engel-21Lux/SÜdtiroler Archäologiemuseum

Clinical trial starts to restore vision loss using gene therapy

GlobalToronto

Angelina Jolie: I had double mastectomy because of high breast cancer risk

ReutersVideo

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By Gil Aegerter and Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, Staff Writers, NBC News

Angelina Jolie says she has undergone a preventive double mastectomy after being told that she had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer, along with a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer.

Toby Melville / Reuters

In an article published in the opinion section of Tuesday's New York Times, Jolie said her decision was informed by her mother's long fight against cancer. Marcheline Bertrand died in 2007 at age 56.

Jolie said she hoped that other women would find encouragement from her story. 

"I choose not to keep my story private because there are many women who do not know that they might be living under the shadow of cancer," Jolie said in the Times article. "It is my hope that they, too, will be able to get gene tested, and that if they have a high risk they, too, will know that they have strong options." 

Jolie, an actress and activist, said she carries a gene, BRCA1, that increases the risk of breast and ovarian cancer. According to Jolie and a fact sheet from the Cancer Institute at Stanford Medicine, women with the BRCA1 gene have an average of a 65 percent lifetime risk for breast cancer, along with heightened risk of the cancer at an early age. Jolie is 37. 

Jolie said three months of medical procedures that the mastectomies involved were completed April 27. She said the surgery included implants to reconstruct her breasts.

She said that her partner, Brad Pitt, was present for the surgeries. She said her six children, who range in age from 11 to 4, saw nothing that made them uncomfortable.

"They can see my small scars and that’s it," Jolie wrote. "Everything else is just Mommy, the same as she always was. And they know that I love them and will do anything to be with them as long as I can."

Other famous women with the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes have undergone preventive double mastectomies, including reality star Sharon Osbourne, wife of rocker Ozzy.

"I've had cancer before and I didn't want to live under that cloud," Osborne said in an interview last fall.

In January, Miss America contestant Allyn Rose, representing the District of Columbia, announced that she carries another genetic mutation -- not BRCA1 or BRCA2 -- and plans to have a double mastectomy after her year of serving as Miss D.C.

Friends and fans were quick to support Jolie via messages on Twitter. Actress Marlee Matlin called her "brave, honest (and) strong." And "Veronica Mars" star Kristen Bell praised Jolie's article as "admirable."

Human intelligence is declining according to Stanford geneticist

follow the money

http://rt.com/usa/news/intelligence-stanford-years-fragile-531/

Ever can’t help but think you’re surrounded by idiots? A leading scientist at Stanford University thinks he has the answer, and the bad news is things aren’t likely to get any better.

Dr. Gerald Crabtree, a geneticist at Stanford, has published a study that he conducted to try and identify the progression of modern man’s intelligence. As it turns out, however, Dr. Crabtree’s research led him to believe that the collective mind of mankind has been on more or a less a downhill trajectory for quite some time.

According to his research, published in two parts starting with last year’s ‘Our fragile intellect. Part I,’ Dr. Crabtree thinks unavoidable changes in the genetic make-up coupled with modern technological advances has left humans, well, kind of stupid. He has recently published his follow-up analysis, and in it explains that of the roughly 5,000 genes he considered the basis for human intelligence, a number of mutations over the years has forced modern man to be only a portion as bright as his ancestors.

“New developments in genetics, anthropology and neurobiology predict that a very large number of genes underlie our intellectual and emotional abilities, making these abilities genetically surprisingly fragile,” he writes in part one of his research. “Analysis of human mutation rates and the number of genes required for human intellectual and emotional fitness indicates that we are almost certainly losing these abilities,” he adds in his latest report.

From there, the doctor goes on to explain that general mutations over the last few thousand years have left mankind increasingly unable to cope with certain situations that perhaps our ancestors would be more adapted to.

“I would wager that if an average citizen from Athens of 1000 BC were to appear suddenly among us, he or she would be among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues and companions, with a good memory, a broad range of ideas, and a clear-sighted view of important issues. Furthermore, I would guess that he or she would be among the most emotionally stable of our friends and colleagues. I would also make this wager for the ancient inhabitants of Africa, Asia, India or the Americas, of perhaps 2000–6000 years ago. The basis for my wager comes from new developments in genetics, anthropology, and neurobiology that make a clear prediction that our intellectual and emotional abilities are genetically surprisingly fragile.”

According to the doctor, humans were at their most intelligent when “every individual was exposed to nature’s raw selective mechanisms on a daily basis.” Under those conditions, adaption, he argued, was much more of a matter than fight or flight. Rather, says the scientists, it was a sink or swim situation for generations upon generations.

“We, as a species, are surprisingly intellectually fragile and perhaps reached a peak 2,000 to 6,000 years ago,” he writes. “If selection is only slightly relaxed, one would still conclude that nearly all of us are compromised compared to our ancient ancestors of 3,000 to 6,000 years ago.”

———–

are we are smarter than 6000 years ago?..they had great minds who could read the stars and knew maths..they made pyramids back then..we cant copy that now to that sort of precision..we had to use our minds for everything to live and survive..we have better technology now but whats that mean for human brain development?..i think hes probably correct..

Las pelirrojas y la anestesia

Microsiervos

Todavía no se sabe muy bien por qué, pero resulta que las pelirrojas necesitan un 20 por ciento más de anestesia que el resto de personas para que la sustancia les haga efecto cuando están sobre una mesa de operaciones.

Al principio los anestesistas simplemente conocían el dato en base a sus experiencias, pero una serie de experimentos «ligeramente crueles, por el bien de la ciencia» confirmó el hecho, midiendo el dolor que sentían al recibir descargas eléctricas mientras se les suministraba gas anestesiante.

Se cree que esto puede tener que ver con algún factor de tipo genético común a todas las mujeres pelirrojas, que además de proporcionarles su natural palidez y color de pelo rojizo las haga especialmente sensibles al dolor; de ahí que sea más difícil «dormirlas» con anestesia. [Fuente: Discovery Fit & Healt vía How Stuff Works.]

How your genes shape your politics

The Economist

IN 1882 W.S. Gilbert wrote, to a tune by Sir Arthur Sullivan, a ditty that went “I often think it’s comical how Nature always does contrive/that every boy and every gal that’s born into the world alive/is either a little Liberal or else a little Conservative.”

In the 19th century, that view, though humorously intended, would not have been out of place among respectable thinkers. The detail of a man’s opinion might be changed by circumstances. But the idea that much of his character was ingrained at birth held no terrors. It is not, however, a view that cut much ice in 20th-century social-scientific thinking, particularly after the second world war. Those who allowed that it might have some value were generally shouted down and sometimes abused, along with all others vehemently suspected of the heresy of believing that genetic differences between individuals could have a role in shaping their behavioural differences.

Such thinking, a product compounded of Marxism (if character really is ingrained at birth, then man might not be perfectible) and a principled rejection of the eugenics that had led, via America’s sterilisation programmes for the “feeble minded”, to the Nazi extermination camps, made life hard for those who wished to ask whether genes really do affect behaviour. Now, however, the pendulum is swinging back. In the matter of both political outlook and political participation it is coming to be seen that genes matter quite a lot. They are not the be-all and end-all. But, as a review of the field published in September in Trends in Genetics, by Peter Hatemi of Pennsylvania State University and Rose McDermott of Brown University, shows, they affect a person’s views of the world almost as much as his circumstances do, and far more than many social scientists have been willing, until recently, to admit.

Family values

The evidence for this claim comes from two types of source, one relatively old and one spanking new. The old is studies of twins, comparing identical and non-identical pairs. The new is a direct examination of people’s DNA, searching for genes whose variation correlates with observable behavioural differences.

Twins studies, which seek to control for the effects of upbringing by comparing identical twins (who share all their DNA) with fraternal ones (who share, on average, half), have been going on since the 1950s. In that time, quite a number, in many countries, have looked in part at political questions. Dr Hatemi and Dr McDermott pored over 89 peer-reviewed papers on the effects of genes and environment (both family upbringing and wider circumstances) on political matters. These included twins’ political knowledge, their attitudes to racial, sexual and religious questions, their views on defence and foreign policy, and their identification with particular political parties.

On all counts, identical twins were found to be more alike than fraternal twins. That knowledge, refracted through the prism of statistical theory, allows calculations of the proportionate influences of genes, family environment and general environment on particular traits to be made (see chart). Some show strong genetic influence. Some show little. Intriguingly, political knowledge and party identification are at opposite ends of the spectrum. As the chart shows knowledge (or rather, presumably, an innate predisposition to acquire such knowledge) is highly genetically determined. Identification with a particular political party, by contrast, is largely a question of family upbringing—much more so than are opinions about the sorts of policy that it might be thought would determine voting patterns.

But even family ties weaken when people leave home—and they do so in a way that helps disentangle genetic influence. Dr Hatemi showed this in 2009 when, along with a group of colleagues, he looked at twins aged between 11 and 75. His results demonstrated that until their late teens both kinds of twins had equally similar political views. Soon after they flew the nest, though, as might be expected, their views began to diverge. And, just as would be expected if genes have political influence, the views of fraternal twins diverged more than did those of identical ones. Between the ages of 18 and 20 identical and fraternal twins both shared nearly 70% of their political ideology. Between the ages of 21 and 25, that had shrunk to 60% for identical twins and 40% for fraternal twins. Clearly, then, genes matter.

Nor do they merely affect a person’s opinions. They also affect his level of political engagement. This was shown in a study published in 2008 by James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego. Dr Fowler and his team analysed the voter-registration records of identical and fraternal twins from Los Angeles, and also from a more nationally representative database. They found that identical twins are 53% more likely either both to register or both not to register than are fraternal twins.

Political signals

Twins studies like these unequivocally demonstrate the heritability of politically related behaviour. What they do not do, though, is explain the underlying biology. That is an area which is only now starting to be explored.

In 2010 a study published by Dr Fowler and his colleagues implicated a gene known as DRD4 in the development of political affiliation. DRD4 encodes a receptor molecule for a neurotransmitter called dopamine. (Neurotransmitters are chemicals that carry signals from one nerve cell to another.) Those with a variant of DRD4 called 7R, and also a large network of friends acquired during their adolescence, tended to be (in the American sense of the word) liberals—ie, left wing.

One interesting point about this observation is that it requires both a genetic input (the 7R variant) and an environmental one (the network of friends) to take effect. DRD4-7R has previously been associated with novelty-seeking behaviour. The authors of the paper speculate that the interaction of that tendency with possible exposure to lots of different ideas held by lots of different people might push an individual in a leftwardly direction.

Following up on Dr Fowler’s work, research published earlier this year by a team led by Dr Hatemi found a further 11 genes, different varieties of which might be responsible for inclining people towards liberalism or conservatism in the way that Gilbert described. These included genes involved in the regulation of three neurotransmitters—dopamine, glutamate and serotonin—and also G-protein-coupled receptors, which react to a wide variety of stimulants. Most astonishingly, the researchers found that olfactory receptors are also implicated, giving a whole, new twist to the idea that someone’s political platform “smells” wrong.

The word “inclining” is important. No one is suggesting that there are particular genes, or versions of genes “for” liberalism or conservatism. But inclinations there do seem to be. Moreover, direct studies of genes also support what the twins studies suggest about political engagement, independent of opinion. In particular, work by Dr Fowler implicates another dopamine receptor, DRD2, and also 5HTT, which regulates serotonin levels, in influencing voter turnout. People with versions of these genes that increase the effect of the neurotransmitter are more likely to vote than those with low-activity versions.

The will and the way

The third part of the question, though, is how this all links up with the fundamental driver of biology, evolution. The suggestion of Dr Hatemi and Dr McDermott is that political action is the collective expression of some pretty primal biological motives: those of survival and procreation. Deciding whether or not to be part of a particular group, whom else to admit to your group, how to keep or share resources, and how much sexual freedom to afford oneself, one’s neighbours and one’s children are all, and always have been, lively matters of political debate. But they are also all matters that have an impact on the crucial Darwinian business of getting genes into the next generation.

Dr Hatemi and Dr McDermott are not suggesting genetic factors directly create ideologies that relate to these matters. They are suggesting, though, that genes assist in deciding which opinions an individual will find it most attractive to cleave to.

Unlike the social determinists of old, however, who frequently refused to concede even the possibility of genetic influence on behaviour, the new generation of genetic political scientists are perfectly happy to acknowledge nurture along with nature. Dr Hatemi’s own work, for instance, has shown that external shocks, such as unemployment and divorce, effectively abolish the genetic influences he has detected on many ideological questions as other responses, more appropriate to survival in the changed circumstances, kick in. These responses too, of course, are probably under evolutionary—and hence genetic—control. But they are different from the ones being looked for at present.

That sort of granularity, and the need to accept partial rather than universal explanations for biological phenomena, led the two researchers to one other thought. This is that part of the problem social science has had in the past in accepting biological explanations is that its practitioners do not understand the nature of the claims being made. There are, to repeat, no genes for socialism or conservatism, or for prejudice or tolerance, any more than there are genes for Christianity or Islam. But a person’s genes can sometimes propel him more easily in one direction than another. His free will is, if you like, a little freer to turn right than left, or vice versa. Gilbert was therefore not quite right. But he was not exactly wrong, either.

New genetic clues to 4 types of breast cancer found

NBC/

NEW YORK — Scientists reported Sunday that they have completed a major analysis of the genetics of breast cancer, finding four major classes of the disease. They hope their work will lead to more effective treatments, perhaps with some drugs already in use.

The new finding offers hints that one type of breast cancer might be vulnerable to drugs that already work against ovarian cancer.

The study, published online Sunday by the journal Nature, is the latest example of research into the biological details of tumors, rather than focusing primarily on where cancer arises in the body.

The hope is that such research can reveal cancer's genetic weaknesses for better drug targeting.

"With this study, we're one giant step closer to understanding the genetic origins of the four major subtypes of breast cancer," Dr. Matthew Ellis of the Washington University School of Medicine said in a statement. He is a co-leader of the research.

"Now we can investigate which drugs work best for patients based on the genetic profiles of their tumors," he said.

The researchers analyzed DNA of breast cancer tumors from 825 patients, looking for abnormalities. Altogether, they reported, breast cancers appear to fall into four main classes when viewed in this way.

One class showed similarities to ovarian cancers, suggesting it may be driven by similar biological developments.

"It's clear they are genetically more similar to ovarian tumors than to other breast cancers," Ellis said. "Whether they can be treated the same way is an intriguing possibility that needs to be explored."

The report is the latest from the Cancer Genome Atlas, a federally funded project that has produced similar analyses for brain, colorectal, lung, and ovarian cancers.

New DNA project shows us living beyond our genes

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"Corazon Azul": Futurismo y manipulación genética

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latercera.com/

Una Cuba apocalíptica habitada por individuos alterados genéticamente para afianzar el paradigma del socialismo, es la premisa de "Corazón Azul", la nueva película de ciencia ficción que prepara el cineasta independiente cubano Miguel Coyula y que debe estar terminada en 2014. 

La sinopsis arranca cuando a raíz de la explosión mundial de la ingeniería genética, el líder cubano Fidel Castro se lanza a cumplimentar su sueño de crear "el hombre nuevo" para convertir el socialismo cubano en el paradigma a seguir, según adelantó a Efe Coyula, que se encarga del guión, la dirección y edición del filme. 

El realizador de 35 años ubicará la historia en una futura sociedad distópica "que ha heredado lo peor del comunismo y del capitalismo" y donde esos individuos "superiores" pero con trastornos psicológicos terminan siendo rechazados y buscan destruir el orden social y político de la isla. 

"Me interesa explorar la idea de la perfección, la mediocridad, la monotonía y la idea de lo que puede ser una revolución según el que mira. Vivimos en un momento con todo el movimiento de protestas mundiales, en que se ha repensado la idea de una revolución", afirmó Coyula en una entrevista con Efe vía email. 

Graduado de la Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión de Cuba y del Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute de Nueva York, Coyula escribió el guión en esa ciudad norteamericana en 2004 con la idea de rodar allí, pero finalmente decidió trasladar la historia a su país. 

La cinta de bajo presupuesto tendrá locaciones en La Habana y después pasará un largo proceso de postproducción y montaje mediante la manipulación digital de imágenes, la misma técnica que Coyula utilizó con su computadora para crear su anterior "Memorias del Desarrollo", estrenada en el Festival de Sundance 2010. 

En los primeros minutos del tráiler disponible, aparecen imágenes documentales "dramatizadas" y "sacadas de contexto" que incluyen un discurso del expresidente Fidel Castro afirmando que el orden actual establecido en el mundo no podrá perdurar y la especie humana puede ser regulada. 

Coyula indica que Fidel Castro solo aparecerá al inicio "como detonante de lo que será el origen de varios de los personajes" que han sido alterados genéticamente, ya que después la historia salta a un futuro donde Cuba está contaminada por la lluvia ácida y la economía se sustenta en inversiones chinas en pozos petroleros.   Mas >>

Super Humans [Dcoumentary]

Top Documentary Films

Throughout history, the forces of evolution and genetic mutation have endowed humans with astonishing new abilities and features. It’s a process that continues to this day, and nowhere is it more evident than in the fascinating world of Stan Lee’s Superhumans. Co-hosted by Stan Lee, the legendary creator of the X-Men, the series scours the globe for the real-life counterparts of Lee’s characters–people with unique genetic traits that translate into remarkable powers.

These include a man whose body is powerfully magnetic, another who can withstand deadly levels of cold and yet another whose brain performs complex calculations at staggering speeds.

In each episode, these superhumans undergo tests that may help explain their amazing gifts, while viewers discover the long history of people with extraordinary powers.

Daniel Browning Smith, who’s been dubbed the most flexible man in the world, hosts this thrilling journey into the farthest reaches of humankind.

Donor Unknown [Clip 3]

From their big toes, affection for animals, and, of course, their eyebrows, the offspring of Donor 150 were amazed to discover what they had in common both in their appearances and personalities, raising intriguing questions about our understanding of parenthood and the strange power of our genetic connections.

Donor Unknown is a uniquely 21st century story. The connections made between the children and their donor dad draw as much on modern technology as on old‐fashioned coincidence. While the siblings seem to take their ever-expanding family in stride, Jeffrey is more apprehensive about meeting some of his biological children for the first time. Donor Unknown raises intriguing questions about our understanding of parenthood, and the strange power of our genetic connections.

Naked mole rat genome may point way to long, healthy life

The Washington Post

By David Brown

The upside is you live a ridiculously long and healthy life, can’t develop cancer, feel very little pain, never get lonely and have great skin right to the end.
The downside is you breathe stinky air, rarely go outside, tend to get cold, don’t see well, live in a monarchy and can’t count on having sex. (Also, you’re a naked mole rat.)

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(Eric Gay/AP) - Professor Rochelle Buffenstein holds a naked mole rat at the Barshop Institute at the UT Health Science Center in San Antonio.

How this collection of traits and behaviors came to exist in a strange rodent found only in the Horn of Africa has been a mystery. Now biologists have a tool for unraveling it — and what they find may one day prove useful to human medicine.

A team of 36 scientists working on three continents published the genome Wednesday of the naked mole rat, the latest and perhaps most exotic organism to have its entire DNA sequence transcribed.

“It’s a treasure-trove for cancer and Alzheimer’s research. It’s got so much information that we can now go and mine to test all kinds of theories about aging and disease,” said Rochelle Buffenstein, a researcher at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio who participated in the project.

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Not smarter, only bigger!

By Kate Kelland | Reuters – Wed, 27 Jul, 2011
LONDON (Reuters)

People from northern parts of the world have evolved bigger brains and larger eyes to help them to cope with long, dark winters and dim skies, scientists said on Wednesday.
Researchers from Oxford University studied the eye sockets and brain capacity of 55 human skulls from 12 different populations across the world and found that the further human populations live from the equator, the bigger their brains.
It's not because they are smarter, however, but because they need bigger vision areas in the brain to cope with the low light levels at high latitudes, the scientists said in a report of their findings in the journal Biology Letters.
"As you move away from the equator, there's less and less light available, so humans have had to evolve bigger and bigger eyes," said Eiluned Pearce from Oxford's School of Anthropology, who led the study. "Their brains also need to be bigger to deal with the extra visual input.
"Having bigger brains doesn't mean that higher latitude humans are smarter, it just means they need bigger brains to be able to see well where they live."
The skulls used in the study dated back to the 1800s and included samples from indigenous populations of England, Australia, Canary Islands, China, France, India, Kenya, Micronesia, Scandinavia, Somalia, Uganda and the United States.
The researchers plotted the volume of the eye sockets and brain cavities against the latitude of the central point of each individual's country of origin and found that the size of both the brain and the eyes could be directly linked to the latitude of the country.
Oxford's Robin Dunbar, who also worked on the study, said the results showed the speed at which humans had evolved to cope with the challenges of new habitats.
"Humans have only lived at high latitudes in Europe and Asia for a few tens of thousands of years, yet they seem to have adapted their visual systems surprisingly rapidly to the cloudy skies, dull weather and long winters," he said.
The researchers said that from measuring the brain cavity, the study suggested the biggest brains belonged to populations who lived in Scandinavia, and the smallest belonged to Micronesians.

Eternal Life -That’s Impossible Part 4 - Documentary

Uploaded by DMTilian on Apr 21, 2011

Examines the efforts being used to prolong life;

Growth & fabrication of replacement body parts from skin, to organs, to entire limbs. Creating microscopic "nano" robotics capable of eradicating deadly diseases, but at what electronic cost to the body?

And endeavours incl. stem cell research into reversing the aging process.

Where do ethics lie on in effect playing God; is the false or fabricated extension of humanity inhumane? or an inevitable rescue from the destructive human condition?